Mr. Monk is Cleaned Out (17 page)

Anna joined her husband on the couch and took his hand. “And my nightmare would have just begun. I don’t blame you for any of this and I certainly don’t want to lose you, Bob. We’re in this together, no matter what happens.”

“Your explanation is that your drinking was a suicide attempt,” Monk said.

He stated the obvious, but I believe he was simply thinking out loud, making the declaration so he could hear it, study it, and see if it was the missing piece that would solve the mystery and restore order.

Tears began to stream down Anna’s cheeks. “I went to the movies last night. Two stupid comedies, just to take my mind off of things. If only I’d known what Bob was thinking. When I got home, I found him lying on the floor, his face swollen, the empty martini glasses on the table. I was terrified. Thank God I always carry EpiPens with me now in my purse, just in case some fool puts wine sauce on Bob’s steak or something. So I injected him with all the pens I had until he came around.”

I knew about EpiPens. A friend of mine was allergic to bee stings and carried some EpiPens around with her. They were premeasured doses of epinephrine in spring loaded, auto-injecting syringes that she could jam into her thigh, even through her jeans.

“Why didn’t you call 911 and get him to a hospital after that?” I asked. “He could have died.”

“The last thing we need on top of everything else is the world ridiculing Bob for attempting suicide,” she said. “The media would twist it into an admission of guilt.”

“I do feel guilty,” Bob said. “But not for stealing two billion dollars or killing anybody. I didn’t do that. My crime was hubris and stupidity.”

Monk rolled his shoulders, then cocked his head from side to side. “Nope, you’re still the guy.”

I believed it, too, even if I couldn’t prove it.

“His explanation makes a lot more sense than yours,” Ingo said.

“That’s enough,” Stottlemeyer said to Ingo.

“But he cast aspersions on the Triax XG7 8210,” Ingo said. “That can’t go unchallenged. It’s—”

“Get out of here,” Stottlemeyer said, cutting him off. “And don’t say a word to anyone, especially the reporters outside, about what has occurred here today. Do I make myself clear?”

Ingo nodded and marched out.

Stottlemeyer turned to Disher. “You can stop knocking on the walls now.”

“But I haven’t found the secret door,” Disher said.

“There isn’t one,” he said.

“Maybe it’s on the floor,” Disher said, and started stomping around.

Stottlemeyer grabbed him by the arm. “Stop. Stand still. Take your notebook and the pencil out of your pocket and make notes.”

Disher did as he was told.

Stottlemeyer took a deep breath and turned to Bob and Anna Sebes. “Do you know anybody who might have wanted Lincoln Clovis dead?”

“Him,” Monk said, pointing at Bob.

Stottlemeyer sighed. “I wasn’t talking to you, Monk. In fact, it’s time for you to go.”

“But we’re not done here,” Monk said.

“You are,” Stottlemeyer said. “I’ll see you back at the station.”

Monk didn’t argue. He turned and walked out of the room. I hung back for a moment, making sure to catch Stottlemeyer’s eye with my angriest look. I did, but he didn’t wither under it. If anybody withered, it was me.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

Mr. Monk Is Unappreciated

W
e waited over an hour in Stottlemeyer’s office for him to return. Monk occupied himself by sweeping the floor, dusting the shelves, and organizing everything.

There was a time when I would have wondered how Monk could humiliate himself by cleaning Stottlemeyer’s office after the captain had just treated him so rudely.

But now I was familiar enough with Monk to understand that he wasn’t cleaning the office for Stottlemeyer, he was doing it for himself. It was a way to relax, to clear his mind, and to create an oasis of order amidst all the disorder around him.

I didn’t have any handy rituals or activities to relieve myself of all my anxiety, frustration, anger, and fear. So I sat on that horrible vinyl couch, stewing in it all.

Aside from my money woes and uncertain future, I was upset that Sebes was getting away with murder. I knew that Monk was right, and that Sebes was lying about his suicide attempt. But I had no idea how Sebes had outsmarted the sophisticated monitoring device strapped to his ankle, or how he got past all the reporters and cops outside his house. And judging by how intensely Monk was cleaning, he didn’t know the answers, either.

I was also sure that the murder wasn’t the only thing on Monk’s mind. He was broke, unemployed, and homeless. And it was unlikely that Stottlemeyer would let Monk stay at his place much longer.

I had no answers, and going over all the questions only made me more anxious, frustrated, and scared. But I couldn’t stop myself from doing it anyway. I guess that’s what Monk felt, on a much bigger scale, every minute of every day about everything.

Maybe we were on the same wavelength, as he put it, in more ways than I cared to admit.

When Stottlemeyer and Disher finally returned, the captain regarded his clean, orderly, shining office as if it had been ransacked instead.

“This is my private space, Monk,” Stottlemeyer said.

“It was a messy private space.”

“Did I ask you to clean it?”

“I did it as a courtesy,” Monk said.

“The courteous thing to do would have been to leave my things alone,” he said. “That goes for my office and my home.”

“Oh, spare me.” I’d had enough. I got up off the couch. “We didn’t sit here for an hour so we could listen to more of your whining.”

Stottlemeyer turned to me. “What did you say?”

“You heard me. You told us to wait here and you know Mr. Monk. If you didn’t expect him to do you this courtesy, then you’re a lousy judge of character and you have no one to blame but yourself. So let’s move on, shall we?”

Monk couldn’t have looked more astonished if I’d taken out a gun and shot the captain.

Disher whistled, or at least he tried to. It came out sounding more like he was blowing his nose. “Wow, someone got up on the wrong side of the bed this morning.”

“I certainly did. I was summoned at three thirty in the morning to a crime scene by someone I don’t work for and who I don’t owe a damn thing,” I said. “But like a fool, I went anyway.”

“She’s menstruating,” Monk said.

All three men nodded knowingly, as if that explained everything, which only made me angrier, because it was sexist, patronizing, and not true.

“That has nothing to do with it, Mr. Monk. I don’t appreciate being treated like crap and you shouldn’t, either.”

“Please don’t use the c-word,” Monk said, and then, by way of apologizing to the others, he added: “She’s menstruating.”

They nodded again.

“Stop that,” I said. “You have no idea how insulting that is, and if you do, and you continue anyway, then you’re pigs.”

“I’m sorry if I was abrupt with you and Monk when we were questioning Sebes,” Stottlemeyer said. “But I couldn’t have Monk distracting us any longer with his dead end.”

“He’s the guy,” Monk said.

“That’s exactly what I’m talking about, Monk. He is not the guy—he can’t possibly be the guy. You’re wrong.”

“He’s never wrong about murder,” I said.

“He is this time,” Stottlemeyer said. “Unless Monk can tell me how Bob Sebes managed to get that monitoring unit off without activating all those alarms, put it on somebody else, and sneak out of the house. And how he snuck somebody else in, whoever the hell that somebody is, to wear the monitor and have a few drinks, and snuck the guy out again.”

“The secret tunnel could explain the in-and-out stuff,” Disher said with authority. “But not the monitor thing.”

“There is no secret tunnel,” Stottlemeyer said.

“We don’t know that,” Disher said. “Because it’s still secret until we find it.”

“The only person to leave that house was Anna Sebes,” Stottlemeyer said. “And she went in and out the front door.”

“Maybe she killed them,” Disher said. “She was out when Haxby was killed, too.”

Monk shook his head. “With her arthritis, she couldn’t have tied the rope into a noose or lifted Clovis up onto the railing. And it still doesn’t explain Bob’s drinking.”

“Bob explained it, Monk,” Stottlemeyer said. “Pretty convincingly, too.”

“He didn’t convince me,” Monk said.

“And that’s why I had to throw you out,” Stottlemeyer said. “You’ve become a hindrance to this investigation. There are other suspects.”

“Like who?” I asked.

“Clovis talked his family and friends into investing with Sebes and they lost everything,” Stottlemeyer said. “How do you think they felt when they discovered Clovis was part of the scheme?”

“Hanging him from the deck also could have been meant as a message to others involved in the scheme,” Disher said.

“How so?” Stottlemeyer asked.

“In 1982, an executive with a private Italian bank, a guy known as ‘God’s banker’ because of his dealings with the Vatican, was hung from a bridge over the Thames in London. The bank was one billion dollars in debt and was supposedly owned by the mob. It was a huge scandal. The theory was that the banker was killed by the mob to prevent him from talking and as a warning to others to keep their mouths shut. Both that banker and Clovis were involved in financial scandals and hung near waterways. The symbolic similarities between the two killings may be a coincidence or maybe they’re not.”

Stottlemeyer looked thoughtfully at Disher for a long moment. “How did you know that story about the Italian banker?”

“It happened when I was a kid and it was something I never forgot.”

“That’s really good, out-of-the-box thinking. You may be on to something there.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, of course,” Stottlemeyer said. “Let’s put some men on it and see where it leads us.”

“How about the secret door?” Disher asked.

“Don’t push your luck,” Stottlemeyer said.

Disher hurried out and Stottlemeyer directed his attention back to the two of us. Frankly, I don’t know why we were still standing there. Stottlemeyer had made his point clear. Maybe the reason we hadn’t moved was inertia, exhaustion, or the knowledge that we had nowhere else we had to be.

“Sometimes Randy surprises me,” Stottlemeyer said.

“Mr. Monk does, too,” I said. “This is not the first time you’ve told him that the person he’s accused of murder couldn’t possibly be guilty.”

“I know, I know, I know,” Stottlemeyer said and sighed wearily. “This is where you bring up the astronaut again, whose alibi was that he was in outer space at the time of his girlfriend’s murder.”

“I could mention a lot of cases.”

“So now you’re going to remind me that I didn’t believe Monk when he said the killer was a guy who was in a coma at the time of the murders.”

“No, I’m going to tell you about the killer whose alibi was that he was in his house, wearing a tamperproof monitoring bracelet, and under constant surveillance by the media and the police, at the time of the murders.”

Stottlemeyer went behind his desk and sat down heavily in his chair, as if he weighed ten thousand pounds. “I don’t know why I am discussing this with you. You’re not part of this investigation.”

“You thought we should be included at three thirty this morning,” I said.

“I couldn’t leave Monk alone in my apartment,” Stottlemeyer said.

“Why not?” Monk asked.

“You know why not,” Stottlemeyer said. “You wanted to throw out everything I own. I brought you along to San Mateo to keep you out of trouble and to do you a favor.”

“If you wanted to do me a favor you would have let me throw out all of the contaminated trash in your condo,” Monk said.

“I knew you were personally interested in anything that might be potentially connected to the Sebes case,” Stottlemeyer said. “That was the favor I was doing by bringing you with me.”

“You were taking advantage of him,” I said. “Again.”

“We’re done discussing this. I have work to do.” Stottlemeyer reached into his pocket, took out a set of keys, and tossed them to Monk. “Go home, get some rest, and put everything of mine back where it was.”

Monk tossed the keys back to the captain. “I can’t stay in your home another night.”

“Is it because of this Sebes thing?”

“It’s because of the way you live,” Monk said. “No offense, but I can understand why your wife left you and your girlfriend became a psychopathic killer.”

“Where are you going to stay?”

Monk shrugged. “There are plenty of overpasses in this city. There must be space for another homeless, transient, hobo bum like me under one of them.”

He walked out and I followed him. We were almost at the stairs when Disher came running up to us and asked us to wait.

“I heard about the trouble you’re in,” Disher said. “I think I can help. I’ve got a job for you.”

“You’re going to bring us on as your consultants,” Monk said.

“I’m afraid not.” Disher reached into his pocket and handed me a piece of paper. “But here’s another offer. Fashion Frisson is a clothing store in the Bayview Mall. The manager owes me a favor and I happen to know that she needs two new salespeople.”

“How do you know that?” I asked.

“Because I arrested them,” Disher said. “They had hidden cameras in the dressing rooms and got their jollies taking videos of the naked customers. I managed to keep their arrest quiet so the media never found out about it. Her business would have been ruined because of those two sickos and it wasn’t her fault.”

“You did a good deed,” Monk said.

“And now you’re doing another,” I said. “Thank you, Randy.”

“What are friends for?” he said. “It’s all worked out. You start tomorrow at ten.”

At least I had one less thing to worry about, even if it was barely more than a minimum wage job. But there was still the question of where Monk was going to stay. I asked him about that when we got into my car.

“Do you have a particular overpass in mind?”

“I wasn’t serious about that,” Monk replied.

“That’s a shocker,” I said. “You really had me going. So what’s your plan?”

“Take me to hell,” Monk said.

“An all-you-can-eat buffet?”

“Take me home,” he said.

“You can’t get into your apartment,” I said. “Not unless you want to break in.”

“I didn’t mean that home,” he said. “I meant home.”